


Blair's Intro to Drink

by Bluewolf458



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Gen, Sentinel Thursday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2016-12-06
Packaged: 2018-09-06 22:03:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8771044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: The title says it all...





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Sentinel Thursday prompt 'liquor'

Blair's Intro to Drink

by Bluewolf

Granted, apart from one or two who had taken some years to decide they wanted a degree and so started late, his classmates were mostly too young to be served anything but soft drinks if they went to, say, Club Doom - although those older ones could - and did - buy booze for everyone attending private, common room parties. But even the eighteen-year-olds considered Blair too young to attend these.

It didn't worry Blair.

He didn't need to experiment with liquor. He had spent time in countries where teenagers, at least, were given well-watered wine with their meals. Before that, however... He had sampled sherry when he was twelve, courtesy of the parents of Naomi's then boyfriend. Bruce's brother, some ten years older than Bruce, was an alcoholic, and his parents were convinced it was because he hadn't been introduced to liquor when he was young, and therefore overdid the drinking when he was of age. And so they introduced Bruce to liquor - in moderation - when he was in his early teens. When he reached legal age, Bruce kept his drinking moderate, and this doubly convinced his parents that their actions had been right. And so they extended it to Blair. Naomi hadn't thought about that, but understood and acquiesced.

A subsequent boyfriend introduced Blair to beer a couple of years later.

A few weeks before his sixteenth birthday, Blair had experienced his first and only hangover. He had tried several different 'hard' drinks once he hit fifteen, quickly discovering that he definitely preferred beer to most spirits... and, finally, that the one thing he simply could not drink was gin. He had drunk one gin and tonic... Less than an hour later he had been sick, went to bed still feeling sick, and woke next morning with a serious hangover. Naomi had been sympathetic - she knew he had only had the one drink, and that he had learned an important lesson.

No, at sixteen Blair had no need to experiment with liquor. And he said nothing when he recognized the symptoms of a hangover in some of his classmates in his freshman year. They didn't need to know that he knew...

But the one thing he couldn't understand was why, having once experienced a hangover, at least some of them didn't learn from it and cut back on their drinking.

***

When he was eighteen - even although he still looked far younger than his actual age - and accepted at the common room parties, he discovered why. A lot of his fellows did know when they'd had enough, did try to refuse another drink... but there was a small group of the older students who thought it funny to say, "Don't be such a wuss! A real man would have another!" and the hapless youngsters fell for it every time.

But when they tried it with Blair - he just grinned. "I've had enough," he said. "I wouldn't actually enjoy another one. That's when I know I've had enough. It doesn't taste right."

"Well, how about changing drinks? You've been sticking to beer all night - how about a bourbon?"

"Don't like the stuff. A really mature Scotch, now - something that's forty, fifty years in the cask before it's bottled - that really is good."

He got a stunned look in response to that. "How do you know - ?"

"My Mom and I were in Scotland at New Year, the year I was fifteen, and the friends we were visiting had a bottle of forty-five-year-old Scotch. They insisted that even as young as I was, I should bring in the New Year with it, just as the adults did. Oh, they watered it well down for me - but oh, it was good! Even at that age, without much experience of liquor, I could tell. Rich, smooth... Mmmm." Internally, Blair was chuckling - these idiots might be able, between them, to buy a bottle of really mature Scotch, but he doubted it - not even to see him getting drunk. They definitely preferred quantity to quality, and the $1000+ it would cost to buy one bottle of a good mature Scotch... No. They wouldn't do it.

But now that he remembered about it... one day, when he had graduated and was working, he would definitely treat himself to a bottle... and drink a toast to Blair and Linda Miller.

 

 


End file.
